


The Breakfast After the Storm

by theselittlethings



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Florida, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, F/M, Fictional Hurricane, Fluff, Four Things I Haven't Done For This Fandom, Happy, Rey is a sweetheart, Slice of Life, So I Tried Them All At Once, g-rated, waffle house au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 12:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theselittlethings/pseuds/theselittlethings
Summary: Ben Solo didn't heed the week's worth of warnings to prepare for the hurricane, losing power and cell service right before sending a text that could make or break his next trade. Hungry for a hot meal and running low on gas, he heads for the only restaurant open nearby - frustrated to find everyone else in town had the exact same idea - including a cleanup volunteer with a sincere smile and kind heart.





	The Breakfast After the Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poppi_Willow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poppi_Willow/gifts).



> For Poppi, one of the brightest and most positive presences on Reylo Twitter. Thank you for bringing so many people together -- and for convincing Waffle House to join the Dark Side ;) Thinking of you and hope you enjoy xoxo

Ben groans as he turns off the road into the Waffle House, unsure why he expected to see anything else beside a hoard of people lined out the door and hanging around the parking lot. It had taken three detours and endless minutes of creeping in & out of single file to avoid the debris still littered over the city’s roads to even get here — He taps his steering wheel as he crawls towards an empty-enough space in the far corner, once halting for a blissfully unaware couple in pajama pants that wander out in front his coupe. He pulls into a bit of pavement next to the dumpster, half his car propped up on the curb. Palm fronds, tendrils of Spanish moss, and bits of splintered plywood are strewn all over the grassy area behind the lot.

He remains seated a moment, checking his phone again for any sign of service. Time will not grant him any exceptions as the minutes creep closer to market closing, making the early afternoon’s sea-salted woody air taste like ash on his tongue. Sure, Hux knew the hurricane was coming and asked him plenty of times last night to confirm whether to pull the trigger on this trade, but Ben insisted on giving him just a few more minutes and he’d text him back. Even though the power already went out.

The message remains unsent in his outbox. Of course the service would go out _then_. Of course.

He runs his hand through his hair and grabs his moneyclip from the glove compartment, glancing at the dash and seeing he only has a half-tank of gas left. He didn’t fill up his car or a gascan before the storm hit, blowing off the local news and bulletins posted all over the grocery store. And he didn’t see any open stations between his home or the Waffle House. He slams the car door a little too loudly, regretting his cavalier attitude when trying to math out how far he can drive in traffic to try and send his text. After over a week of warnings and the cone of uncertainty was just so … uncertain still, saying the eye would be here then there and the maximum wind gusts were this then that — It all seemed like much ado about nothing and that’s what all the locals said but —

Of course he didn’t fill up the gas tank. He didn’t pick up a battery charger for his phone. Because he “could just use the car.” And then the eye shifted its course during the night, the winds picking up like freight trains bending the panes of his boarded windows as he slept on the floor of his closet. Of course.

— Not much to do but sleep past noon, to wake up and find everything’s still out with no resolution estimates _just_ yet from any of the major electric suppliers. None of the FM stations on the hand-crank radio he _did_ purchase were playing any music. Just a marathon of caller after caller sharing personal experiences & updates — and the boring repetition wasn’t making him any less hungry for a hot meal (and the possibility of sending the text along the way).

Again he reminds himself that he should have expected the crowd. Everywhere is closed _except_ Waffle House. He saw something about it in a trade magazine once, the chain’s weather station and commitment to staying open for emergency workers and restless locals no matter what natural disaster strikes. There was one sushi place open on the way too, but it didn’t feel right to get raw fish from a place running their fridge on a flickering generator.

Apparently every other restless person in Daytona Beach had the same idea too, but Ben doesn’t have time to waste. Groups of people loiter at various places within shouting distance of the entrance, with a trio of beach-blonde siblings perched on the front window’s ledge. A middle-aged woman with a messy ponytail & tired eyes is a foot or so away and doesn’t flinch when Ben shields the light from his eyes and tries to see through the glass’s glare. The sheer volume of flitting & sitting shadows indicates the place is pretty crowded, but he squints looking for an empty table nonetheless. 

“Gotta add yer name to the list,” she croaks.

Ben straightens up quickly and the woman spits near his feet, making a chewing sound when she moves her chaw behind her other cheek. He tries not to crinkle his nose and reminds himself that _he_ was the one with the “genius” idea to try and start flipping properties _here_ —

Instead he blinks and repeats the words confusedly. “To the… list?”

The glass door opens and Ben nearly cringes when he sees the benches inside all occupied too. Someone shouts a name from the counter but it’s barely audible. A bald man with a walkie-talkie and badge props the door and calls, “Johnson! Three top!”

A trio of vaping bikers wearing leather vests look up and walk inside. The woman continues, “Been waitin’ an hour already, place is slammed.”

An hour. Ben shifts his jaw and nods wordlessly, stuffing his hands in his pockets and following the men inside. The girl on the window blows a half-formed spearmint gum bubble and asks her mom if she can use the tablet yet.

Ben catches the glass door a few inches before it hits his nose, widening his eyes when he surveys the scenes inside. Every table is filled, every stool at the bar, and workers buzz behind the counter and walk amongst the booths with paper limited service menus & coffee refills. A young man with buzzed hair in textured all-weather pants and a muddy orange shirt cuts in front of Ben to join a small group of similarly-dressed individuals. He kisses a girl on the cheek, the one with a dark bob & dimples, nodding to an older man who hands him one of the paper menus left on the bench. Another girl with freckles and safety glasses propped on her forehead leans in to read with them, bringing her hand up to loosen one of her three hair buns…

“Name?”

…She furrows her brows with intense concentration. Ben notices she’s still wearing large floppy work gloves when she skims the items with her finger. There’s something comforting and familiar about her face that Ben can’t seem to place. She shakes her head and looks up to the man with a teasing sort of glare, “Oh come on, Poe, just let me order the whole menu for the table —”

“Name?”

This time an elderly man taps his shoulder and Ben approaches the counter, stammering before he even has a chance to speak,

“H — How long is — the wait exactly?”

The woman at the register stands on tiptoe to look around Ben’s frame, checking the crowd outside with a rushed expression. She steps to the side to let a server close out her tab and bites her lip as she gauges the occupied tables. A larger group comes to stand and someone sweeps in to bus the dishes away, signaling to the front. The woman acknowledges with a thumbs up before turning back to Ben.

“Say you’re looking at an hour at least?” She clicks her pen. “Did you want to add your name?”

A part of him wants to think he misheard her despite hearing the same outside. An hour. For Waffle House. He says it again in his head, still not believing it after having been to this same location only three weeks ago at 2 AM. Alone, of course, aside from the man sitting next to him at the bar who insisted that Ben carry on a conversation with his mannequin. When he left the server said he was a regular. They both smelled like cabbage.

An _hour_. This has to be a joke. He repeats it aloud this time. “An hour?”

She nods. “Yeah, at least —”

And now he has to wait an hour for a cup of coffee and some eggs because he was too dumb to go to the store for a generator before the storm hit. His regret twists his stomach and fuels his exasperated tone,

“Look, I really need to be in and out and I don’t have —”

She raises her eyebrows and clicks the pen again. Clearly the matter is not up for debate. “Did you want to —”

“Solo.” He means to have some edge in his tone, but it comes out stronger than intended.

There’s a beat as she tries to interpret his response. “Party of one goes to the bar unless you’re willing to share a table. Name?”

He closes his eyes briefly as he realizes the confusion. “The name is Solo.”

“Oh, and party of —”

“Yeah, one.” Of course. “Thanks.”

Ben presses his lips to a line as the woman shouts another name in the room, pivoting to lean in the unused space by the bench. The same bald man with the walkie-talkie stands on the other side and nods to Ben when their eyes meet. No one inside responds when the woman yells the name again, trying to be heard over the swells of conversations filling the dining room. The man steps outside to repeat it there and Ben looks down to his phone with a sigh.

Wait —

His stomach drops when he reads the low battery notification and he holds the screen close to his eyes to confirm the percentage. 

“No! This can’t be — Come on!”

He doesn’t realize he sputters his thoughts aloud, straightening his posture when he closes the popup and opens the screen. A teenage boy with glasses at the end of bench shifts his weight to inch away as Ben’s frustration increases.

“It wasn’t —”

His eyes dart between his phone and the window, where he can see a corner of his coupe peeking out on its curb, as if that might provide an answer. It was nowhere near 5% before, wasn’t he supposed to receive a notification before this, why would it just die like that on him when…

He clenches a fist as his volume increases again. “Of course, and _now_ the phone can’t even hold a charge, _everything_ has to find a way to mess with —”

“Sir?”

The cashier’s tone is firm over the lulling murmurs of pleasant exchanges, but Ben ignores it. His mind races with numbers & balances, hating the uncertainty of whether Hux will pull the trigger without confirmation, and his pulse rushes loudly in his ears as he starts to pace.

“This is ridiculous…” More people have started taking quiet glances towards Ben, including some in the dining room. His fingers feel jumbled like they’re held together by strings & wires as he opens his texts to see his message still waiting unsent. The percentage clicks down to two as he tries to resend, prompting another huff of disbelief. “This is _crazy_! Just — Just work already!”

The woman clears her throat before chiming in again. “Sir, you need to lower —”

Something in the back of his mind acknowledges her words; it signals him to pull back and makes his ribs feel too small. But his irritation blooms stronger, igniting beneath his skin to dismiss any reminders of rationality. He clenches his jaw as the phone flashes to black and he wishes he could crush it in his hand.

“Come _on_!”

Ben motions wildly towards the floor, about to throw his phone but reaffirming his grip at the last second instead. The nervous energy of his uncompleted action spindles down his limbs and spurs his feet to action. He kicks the flat exposed side of the bench with the hard toe of his boot, the impact coiling back up his nerves and echoing loudly in the room.

The teen at the edge jumps to stand, his companions leaning forward to openly stare. Someone eating an omelette at the bar tells his daughter to look away. A server with a fresh pot of coffee steps behind Ben like nothing is happening, raising his eyebrows as he begins his rounds. The group of four waiting in similarly-dirty work uniforms seem to be huddled closer together, with the three-bunned brunette slightly away with a observational interest flickering over her features.

The cashier comes from behind the counter, hands on her hips with narrowed eyes as she strides up to Ben. “Look, you need to keep it down or take that call outside —”

“ _What_ call?” Ben spins around, mouth gaping open as he presents the blank screen. Everything is too scattered for him to realize this does nothing to improve the situation.

She exhales slowly from her nose. “You need to keep it down or —”

The words come off as a challenge through the filter of Ben’s addled nerves, his eyes trained on hers as he snaps, “Or what, you’ll kick me out so I can wander alone around this town I barely know?”

Neither one of them noticed the young woman approach during the conflict, not until she cuts between them with an innocent expression and her hand raised timidly in greeting.

“Hey…”

Ben bites the inside of his cheek when he sees it’s the woman with the three buns from before. Her hands look cartoonishly large in her work gloves as she takes her safety goggles from her forehead and folds them to hang from her shirt’s collar. She steps closer as if she intends to pat Ben’s shoulder, head tilted to the side with an air of unspoken understanding even though he doesn’t know what it means. He staggers back, physically recoiling from her unexpected reaction as she tries again.

“Hey,” she repeats, a little more softly, and Ben holds his breath to hear her as a phone rings shrilly at the counter. The corners of her lips curl up with her small yet open grin, her brown eyes glimmering with hopeful expectation that seems so strangely _genuine_ despite coming from a total stranger.

She pauses to remove one glove, stuffs it into the back pocket of her work pants and looks down to her hand before holding it out again. Her fingers are long & agile, dainty like a pianist’s despite the callouses on her palms and the lines of dirt caked beneath her nails. Ben continues to observe it as she strides up beside him, her gait more confident as his fury deflates. He meets her gaze, surprised her sunny smile hasn’t dimmed and wonders if his own face is as pale as it suddenly feels.

This time he doesn’t shift away when she raises her hand, blinking when she hesitates a second before reaching up to pat his shoulder blade. The movement is gentle but full of meaning, an extension of the compassion he reads in her expression.

She pats his back once more. “You’re not alone.”

He blinks as his body freezes, unsure whether to be flattered or mortified by her kindness. Her eyes soften and he tries not to look away, observing how the tiny laugh lines brighten her entire face. Her fingertips skitter along the cotton threads of his shirt as her hand hesitates for a couple seconds before she drops it to her side. The counter’s landline phone keeps ringing and the cashier goes back to answer, her eyebrows raised as she keeps glancing over to Ben in case she needs to intervene once more.

Yet despite the rush of embarrassment pooling in his throat and heating his neck — it’s as if he and the woman with three buns are the only people in the room. The cacophony of patrons dims and drops away as she removes her other glove, not turning away from Ben as she comes just close enough so he can hear despite her lowered tone,

“Do you have a place to sleep tonight? We’re taking a break from cleanup staging at the Speedway.”

He isn’t sure what she means or why she’s being so discreet. She gestures towards the windows and he looks up across the wide road to the racing stadium, with emergency vehicles and tents sprawled across the parking lots bordering the front entrances. Some golf carts zip around the fire lanes & the pathways to the track.

He leans in slightly to hear her better when she continues, “Someone there should be able to get you to a shelter.”

Ben’s stomach lurches when he looks down at his phone and pieces together her misunderstanding. _So I can wander alone around this town I barely know?_ — He exhales slowly through his nose, biting the skin behind his lip when he sees a pair of EMTs chatting by a fire lane pillar outside. He’s both startled and ashamed by the woman’s sincere attempt to help him, his frustration now feeling very small yet very heavy on his mind. She has seen houses waterlogged from the storm surge, homes crushed by trees, and trailers rolled over & pockmarked from flying debris. He woke up in his walk-in closet with a few shingles missing and a lot of inconvenience he created for himself.

He decides this isn’t a kindness he deserves, realizing he’s been quiet for too many seconds and stumbling over what to say,

“No, my place should be okay, I’m just…” Ben pockets his phone hastily, suddenly embarrassed to have it in his hand. “Yeah. I’ll be fine. Just stressed.”

He swallows and meet her eyes, expecting to see her nose scrunch in disgust with his clarification. No, he doesn’t need help, really, not like some other people do after the storm. He’s making a scene over a nuisance when people are shuttling home from evacuation shelters and bracing themselves for ruin. He’s just a weird guy yelling at his phone in a Waffle House, upset by the possibility of losing a deal that’s big but wouldn’t break him.

Certainly not someone who should be approached by this pretty young woman, innocently generous instead of repulsed. Her first instinct was to give him the benefit of the doubt when everyone else assumed the worst.

But her open expression doesn’t change, her cheeks flushing with a dust of pink instead. “Oh.”

This is where he expects her to mutter an awkward apology and return to her group, who Ben can see glancing their way in his periphery. She stays put instead. Suddenly the distance between them feels smaller and he wonders if he seems as close to her as she does to him.

She continues without missing a beat. “Tell me about it, and it’s pretty crazy here, but better than all the shouting and maps and flags at the track.” Her graceful hands come up to fiddle with her buns as she takes a step back from Ben, wiggling one of her bent elbows towards the dining room. “Who knew organized chaos was so loud?”

Another name is shouted from the counter and the teenage boy on the bench comes to stand. The staff scrambles on as if nothing happened. It’s like the woman single-handedly defused all the tension in the room.

Ben doesn’t know what to say. “Yeah. Who knew.”

He closes the space between them again as the boy and his companions cut behind him to take their table. Ben looks up from his feet when she speaks again,

“What’s your name?”

He forgets it for a second. “…Ben.”

“You okay, Ben?”

There’s something sweet and hopeful about the way she says it. Something he hasn’t felt or seen since staking his new life down here only a few short months ago — like she’s throwing him a rope to moor him onshore. 

“I am.” He shifts his weight on his feet. “I should be.”

She raises her eyebrows and tilts her head. “You sure there’s nothing I can help you out with?” 

Ben shifts his jaw as the front door opens and a pair of young men in surf shorts enter to put their names on the list. He spots his car by the dumpster and isn’t sure why he doesn’t want their conversation to end.

“Do you —” He tries again. “Is there a gas station open anywhere?”

She nods and narrows her eyes in concentration as she sorts through her response. “Um, I think a Marathon by here is getting their generator up? Will be more on line tomorrow.” She glances back to her friends a second. “Rose said something earlier, I can go ask —”

_She’s even prettier in profile,_ he considers and hurries to set aside the thought. There’s a time and a place, he reminds himself, still reeling from this stranger’s continued decency and implicit understanding.

“Thank you.” He doesn’t mean for it to be as serious as it sounds.

“Of course.” She nods like all this is second nature. “Happy to help.”

He grits his teeth as she pivots to leave and ask, scratching an itch on the nape of her neck. She takes only one step to her friends before her entire body pauses, as if physically summoned by a second thought. She turns back with curiosity flickering over her deep brown eyes.

“You really wandering around alone?”

Yes. No. Which is worse? Either one he chooses sounds wrong. He settles on, “In a manner of speaking.”

She smiles again and still he doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve it. “Well, you don’t have to be.”

His face must betray his disbelief, her voice coming low with the same gentle friendly tone from before —

“Hey, I mean it,” she insists. “You want to pull up a chair with us?”

Ben’s mouth opens but no words come out, his tongue turning to cotton against his cheek. Her friends are watching them now, though when Ben looks up they all peer down to the menu in unison. He turns back to Rey and bites his cheek, pressing against his own self-deprecation to force the phrase from his throat,

“Okay. Sure.”

Her eyes soften and his pulse bumps in his ribs, clearing his throat to ask, “What’s your name?”

“Rey.”

It fits her perfectly.

She walks ahead and gestures Ben to follow, passing through a swath of natural light from the window that dances over her smooth sun-kissed skin. He waits for a moment to pass, convinced she’ll reveal her bluff at the very last second as he charts the lines of her slim figure in motion. He doesn’t look away as his hands dart to his back pocket, fumbling a few seconds before taking out his phone. He checks it one last time as if it may fizzle back to life, the object seeming much tinier in his grasp than it did before.

Instead he eyes the logo clock above the kitchen, squinting to confirm the placement of its hands. He doesn’t know how long Rey has been waiting for a table, but he supposes it doesn’t really matter. He does have some hours left.

The phone goes away as Ben reminds himself to move, running his hand through his long dark hair as the men nod in greeting. The other girl has her back to Ben, her shoulders hitching with stifled laughter as she stage-whispers to Rey in a teasing tone,

“Is your _charitable spirit_ always such a _flirt_?”

Rey blushes when she sees Ben approach, playfully elbowing her friend’s upper arm.

“Hey, Rose, come on —”

Ben joins the group with his hands clasped behind his back, deciding it’s more appropriate to order waffles instead.

**Author's Note:**

> Big thank you to my fluff-master betas for their help xoxo [weddersins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weddersins) & [elemie89](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elemie89)


End file.
